


The understanding is too much for my soul to hold, and so my soul will open.

by Alias (anafabula)



Series: you must know where you stop and the world begins [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Age of the Beholding (The Magnus Archives), Banned Together Bingo 2020, Canon-Typical The Beholding Content (The Magnus Archives), Episode: e160 The Eye Opens (The Magnus Archives), Episode: e192 An Appointment (The Magnus Archives), Experimental Style, Flash Fic, Mania, Mindfuck, Other, Sentence crimes! Get your sentence crimes!, Stream of Consciousness, beholding kink, cosmic horror, not necessary to read the others in the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: Jonah has seen enough.
Relationships: The Beholding/Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus
Series: you must know where you stop and the world begins [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1217580
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	The understanding is too much for my soul to hold, and so my soul will open.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [He Won](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29037555) by [IneffableAlien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableAlien/pseuds/IneffableAlien). 



> Fills “`Pacifism`” in the most obtuse way possible, brought to you by Alien’s fic (please go read it if you haven’t) just _grabbing me by the fucking throat_ I guess to the point I'm surprised it took a full day. Sup.
> 
> (Ended up being highkey in conversation with [this also](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730722), as far as my own writing goes, because. Well. You _See_ , when everything happens very much—)

Jonah does not, in the end, reach out and lay a single hand upon the world.

Not himself, not in any way. He does not need to; if he'd needed to, he would not have been - would not have become - the man who could've won.

And he is - 

There are moments, perhaps, when he could do so: before everything has settled, and the tower's taken on the shape of itself, and the world has taken on the shape necessary to support the tower, and the uncertainties have been burnished out of the fabric of their being, and everything finds its place - moments where he could intervene, or have another thought on the matter, or simply become overwhelmed - moments after, as well, where he does see the potential in the little flickers of what could have been a blinding tide of individual narratives, all those tiny little lives still more or less following what for them still feels like a meaningful causality. So too for the little things below that think of themselves, still, as monsters, paying the obeisance that has been _due_ to the concept of Beholding Itself at last simply by their survival - their existence contingent on that superiority, once hidden and then denied and now finally revealed - it would be overwhelming if he'd had to separate them, if there were cacophony in place of this harmony, if there were any meaningful difference or conflict excepting itself from the sublime whole they have been made - if the difference had been meaningful to begin with, if any individual could matter enough to stop him then or distract him now. 

No.

Instead, when he does note such a thing as a single and separate mind, what pulls them under Jonah's regard is, of course, the instances where he's asked to, his Archive's prayers for his attention all but undeniable - and then, _then_ Jonah's willing enough to indulge it, the prospect of turning his mind and his sight to a single point, the inevitability with which that reshapes anything he does more than passively observe, sufficient meaning in the way the Archive quakes before him, before the experience anchors them both even further to the glorious certainty of the world permanently remade -

It fills him, every part of him, tear-slick and resplendent, all gorgeous, heatless light, all _climax._ No need any longer for details of individual identity or history or reprieve or hope - the stuff of momentary pauses and single ends, that absent extraordinary intervention the world he has made, has endeavored to have made, lacks entirely - no setting that exists save to harm, no mercy and no uncertainty, no _end_ to it all, just misery upon clear, sharp misery in a permanent kaleidoscope of the sensation of others' fear. 

The Eye's supremacy now finally rendered undeniable and explicit, gouging from the fabric of the universe all half-measures and distractions - and with it all sense of the dissatisfying and the incomplete - and Jonah left, finally, with no real need to wait or prepare or hold back and no caution in what he savors, concerns of wastefulness or gluttony beyond him, concerns of _silence_ doubly so as a mere shadow of it all falls from his lips in exquisite rhythm and he centers himself to his own incredible and abstract experience with each stroke of his own breathing - if someone hears then that's beyond him until it's not, but oh, he welcomes the prospect, compounding and refracting further - around him, still, always, basking in it, and he does not cease and he is not patient and -

And finally, _finally_ , he does not want at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Cultist Simulator - it's the pre-victory text for the Incursus - because I know what I'm about. (The Incursus being the one that also gives us _I will not live. I will not die. Perhaps, one day, I will rise even higher._ That one.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This is my path, until I am the path.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29485038) by [Alias (anafabula)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias)




End file.
